Rhinestone Heart of Darkness: A Tour of Sex and the City’s Most Horrifying Product Tie-Ins

After receiving an email inviting us to “toast to our favorite girls” with a Sex and the City-themed Champagne flute, we suspected that teenybopper dishware was probably just the tip of the Smirnoff Ice-berg. What other products have been affixed with the Sex and the City logo or one of its hallow aphorisms? For research, your VF Daily blogger traveled into the dark—literally, quite dark—recesses of the Sex and the City-aisles of 6th Avenue’s HBO store to conduct some important anthropological work. As we suspected—in jargon, that’s “hypothesized”—it is a terrifying hellscape, an altar to emptiness, a tome of irrelevance smeared with tacky red light. Join us, as we recount our field notes.

One enters the store by crossing a pink-carpeted threshold. Because your blogger is a girl, upon entry, we were immediately asked by a cheery HBO Store employee, “Sex and the City?” Yes, we replied gamely. We followed his lead toward the back of the store and began our inspection of a pink wedding album emblazoned with the show’s name and the hauntingly vague description, “Wedding Collection.” “Is this a photo album, like for your own wedding?” we asked, eager to one day—fingers crossed!—commemorate our own wedding by literally sandwiching it in the context of another, fictional ceremony. “It’s from the movie,” the attendant replied, obviously unclear about what, if anything, it was. (Archival research suggests it’s less sinister than we’d originally surmised—just some DVDs and a soundtrack for $70.)

As we progressed down the aisles, we saw t-shirts boasting the following slogans: “Mr. Big,” “I’m not afraid of heights. Have you seen my shoes?” and “Single and fabulous” There was a mug that featured the phrase, “Shopping is my cardio” and, similarly, a cooking apron that said, “Hi, I’d like a cheeseburger, please, a large fries, and a cosmopolitan.” There was a carry-all bag that said, “Carrie-all” because there couldn’t not be, apparently.

Most disturbingly, though, there is a line of Sex and the City-inspired lingerie. A leopard-print corset is of the “Samantha” line. “Scintillating and successful with a knack for getting what and who [sic] she wants,” the cruel ad copy teased. A “Carrie” bra was some banal flowered thing; there was also a purple undergarment, presumably correlated to some other character, but it looked soiled, even on the hanger, so we didn’t touch it.

After being scolded—twice—about taking pictures, we left the way we came in: by walking over the pink carpet. The city then swallowed us into the bustling anonymity of Midtown Manhattan, where ladies can assert their personalities and interests by, say, actually demonstrating personality and interests, rather than by wearing a t-shirt that says, “I’m a Carrie.” The shirt felt comfy, though! Anyway, the choice is yours.